Avoiding a surveillance society: how better rules can rein in facial recognition tech

The human face is special. It is simultaneously public and personal. Our faces reveal sensitive information about us: who we are, of course, but also our gender, emotions, health status and more.

Lawmakers in Australia, like those around the world, never anticipated our face data would be harvested on an industrial scale, then used in everything from our smartphones to police CCTV cameras. So we shouldn’t be surprised that our laws have not kept pace with the extraordinary rise of facial recognition technology.

But what kind of laws do we need?

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